The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to apparatus and methods for diagnostic medical imaging, such as Nuclear Medicine (NM) imaging.
In NM imaging, systems with multiple detectors or detector heads may be used to image a subject, such as to scan a region of interest. For example, the detectors may be positioned adjacent the subject to acquire NM data, which is used to generate a three-dimensional (3D) image of the subject.
Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) systems may have moving detector heads positioned to focus on a region of interest. For example, a number of pinhole gamma cameras may be moved (e.g., rotated or swung) to different angular positions for acquiring image data. The acquired image data is then used to generate the 3D images. However, in these SPECT systems, two-dimensional (2D) image acquisition is not provided. Accordingly, if a 2D image is desired, one or more of the 3D images are converted to a 2D image. Thus, even when only 2D images are desired, 3D image data is acquired in order to thereafter convert that data to 2D images. This process adds time to the overall scan and image reconstruction process.